Jacques Roman – Mélodie Boréale

In 1986, Jacques Roman (co-founder and main synthesist of the French band Pulsar), released “Mélodie Boréale”, a cinematic, keyboard-based work of tranquil, harmonic-atmospheric and rather introspective-oriented music.

It’s the slow evolving 17-minute title piece with its calm pads and added sounds that illustrates the album’s content best, roaming in Vangelis “Opera Sauvage” territory and end of ‘70’s TD. The sonic poetry of the lovely emotive “Silence D’Un Petite Fille” kind of reminded me “La Petite Fille de la Mer”, “Croisiere” introduces a Celtic-oriented sound of synths and bagpipes, and the imaginary “Perte De Vu” feels like hypnotizing trip through a territory of widening gorges. It all makes a gentle sonic backdrop of analogue electronics with small portions of hurdy gurdy, flute and guitar.

Later on, the 34-minutes of music of the cassette were added as bonus to the cd-edition of Pulsar’s “Bienvenue Au Conseil D’Administration”.